| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: for Mrs Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed
old Mr Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could
things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the
fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of
the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from
the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly
people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown? For one
moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and
demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so
inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings
from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and
settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke
on the wharves, smoke on the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--
clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two
faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of
mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street,
have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside,
is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the
mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted
and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately
in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: misfortune, and make it perceptible to the beholder's eye. It was
the better to be discerned, by this exterior type, how worn and
old were the soul's more immediate garments; that form and
countenance, the beauty and grace of which had almost transcended
the skill of the most exquisite of artists. It could the more
adequately be known that the soul of the man must have suffered
some miserable wrong, from its earthly experience. There he
seemed to sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him
and the world, but through which, at flitting intervals, might be
caught the same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative,
which Malbone--venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath
House of Seven Gables |
